Atomic Habits
A review on James Clear's book
I recently finished reading Atomic Habits, from James Clear, a long time recommendation I have been putting off. It definitely was a good recommendation, but maybe the expectation was a bit high for this one.
First of all, everything the book says is definitely true. The book, in fact, can be condensed to a small blogpost (which I shall not do here) and the rest of that fluff is just rephrashing of the same concepts, and a lot of examples. To be fair, most of those examples actually add value because they bring to real life cases of the theory that James explains.
In the book, James explains how habits are the make-or-break of human life, allowing us to reach our maximum potential through practice and repetition. He does not put a lot of emphasis into passion, or motivation (which aligns with my own thinking a lot) but rather on the power of practice, repetition and small improvements accumulated over time. He explains how these techniques can be applied to create and improve habits, or work towards getting rid of undesired ones.
He proposes a framework based on human psychology, that indicates how to properly increase the chances that you’ll engage on the activities that you want to do, and move away from the ones that you don’t want to do. He explains how this framework is separated into four steps: the one that signals you to do something (make it obvious so you don’t miss it!), the one that makes you desire do it (improve desire!), the one that takes place while you do your habit (make it easy and enjoyable) and the one that happens once you’re done (make it rewarding).
The book is well structured, with four main chapters dedicated at the aspects of encouraging habits, and four more about ways to discourage other ones. There are a few other chapters that frankly could have been cut out without much loss.
If you’re interested in the subject but don’t want to read a whole book, you can read from James Clear’s blog which talks about the same matter in smaller bite-size pieces.